Another day @ my office

8:00 : Coffee and a bagel. And translation of Korean medicals.
After reviewing the first page of the medical, I realize this medical is rather perplex.
Without going into any specific and rather nasty details, let's just say that a young girl
ended up between two cars..
Girl has been admitted for seven months and counting, so go figure the amount of
medicals that we have and are in need of reviewing so that we may extend our cover
a little and save the poor girl's life. I end up discarding the bagel, no more appetite.
Who could've known that the word comatose and intracranial bleeding are so simple?

11:00 : Diet coke and edamame. Hong Kong Gossip
Working ages on finding evidence of an illegal organ transplant which will cost us a great
deal less we find some hard evidence we can hammer in the face of the surgeon. Kind of
difficult, when the surgeon seems eternally out of office.
Calling up my colleagues in our Hong Kong office. We end up chatting more about
Michael Wen's scandalous night out with the boss' secretary than the legal issues of
prosecuting a very well-renowned surgeon.
I end up transferring our conference to the local authorities. Now it's time to pretend to
be better familiar with organ transplants than the surgeons itself, talking to the Head
Director of the Medical Association and Affairs in HK. He is convinced, however.
Talked to a hospital where supposedly we had our insured admitted. They confirm that
the surgeon works there but that he did not perform transplant surgery.
He is chief surgeon there. That sucks. He is going to be tough to bring down. And I am
not going to go all the way to Hong Kong to prove that is in the wrong and should be
prosecuted for dealing with illegal organ trades.
Too bad I have his signed fraudulant medicals lying right here on my desk...

12:15 : Carrots and a water. Male bonding...
Male colleague from the Travel Claims department, approximately 45-50 years old
walks into my office and I get the impression he wishes to see me for a specific case that
was handed over to my Recovery & Fraud project. But no..
I watch as he fiddles nervously with the cup of coffee in his hands and he manages to
ask another colleague to close the door so that we may have some privacy.
He starts complaining about his work load and that he feels offended, being asked to
deal with specific types of cases, wanting to know if it is by coincidence of if I am aware..
Aware of what?
Apparently, he has a hard time distinguishing his private life from the type of claims he
works with in here. He has always told himself that he should always keep work and sex
separated.
You see, he explained, he has a fetish with women wearing casts/plaster and he finds it
extremely hard to focus on doing his job when dealing with such claims here when he is
sexually aroused at the same time.
I had a meeting subsequently with his supervisor and asked him to keep an eye out for
my poor colleague in his 'extreme conditions'.

13:30 : Ice latté and a phone conference. The US Law
Apparently, it is very difficult to throw a man in jail in the US. You wouldn't believe so,
right? Me neither. But just a phone call won't cut it.
The procedures are insane as we would be crossing borders and the papers that need to
be administered, translated and whatnot in order for us to put just one guy in prison is
a lot of pain.
In short, the guy has faked bills for more than USD 200,000 and used several known
clinics and facilities, which makes the charges even heavier.
Now here is the paradox - We must notify the man before pressing charges, that we will
press charges, and are familiar with his fraud. Imagine what happens if a man is told
that he will be sued for fraud of that caliber? He will run!
As we simply cannot send the police chasing until we have told him that we know he's
committing fraud, we are trying to find several loopholes but the Florida State Law
seemingly won't let that happen.
After an hour on the phone with one of our plaintiffs, he is more exhausted than I am
just listening to the intensity of fraud this man has comitted. He is sure that it will hit
the news - this guy is a pro tennis player after all.
We still haven't found a loophole, so our plan is simply to wait for him to call my office
again and I will let him know that his latest claim is being investigated by the authorities
and see how many seconds it takes for him to hang up.
Once he has hung up, I will have to call the police department immediately in Florida in
his area and send out an arrest form, filed and signed by our attorneys.
Hopefuly he won't flee the country.. Then it is going to be nasty.

15:00 : No carrots and no coffee. Clinical Trials
We are being sued for denying cover of a chemical only administered in trials.
So I went to court with two of our doctors who would back up any medical issues and I
would wisely announce our policy conditions and the legality behind them.
We won.


:55 : Chocholate milk and a banana.
Received phone call from plaintiff in Florida. No problem with our case.
In fact, we have to report the fraud to Attorney's General Office or they
will sue us, for not sueing the guy. What a strange world. I sign out of my
phone, no more time for phone calls.

17:10 : Chocolate candies and soda.
Visited our Emergency Department with the taskforce team, wanting to update their
procedures for faster and better service. Difficult when I am not so familiar with their
schedules. I fake many smiles and eat a lot of candy while listening to an intensely boring
associate explain the office etiquettes.
I grab my bag and enter the conference room where I can powernap in front of the tv.
They have insanely comfy sofas over there and I think I should try and have one trans-
fered to my office so I can sleep when I get tired of hearing the word 'fraud'.

18:30 : Panda Eyes
Time to go home. After I finish the Korean medical...

My job. As in. What I do.

Bupa International

Yes I know, 'wtf is that', right? Well, it's one of the world's largest health insurance companies and I work for the international branch.

Basically, what I do from Monday to Friday, is receive medical information and bills and process these in our system, calculate a reimbursement and then issue this to either a hospital, clinic, doctor or our insured. This takes an intense knowledge of insurance plans, worldwide knowledge of culture and languages and of course, medical awareness.

In October 2009 it was announced by our head office based in Brighton, England - that due to the economical climate (What is that anyway?), we had to cut back on our staff. Ever since, our little world has been rocked back and forth with insecure estimates and a million staff meetings.

Today, we lost 19 staff members...

I was not one of them!

Regardless of the fact that I was not fired makes me insanely sad to realize that I lost 19 of my esteemed colleagues today. I am proud of the people that were 'deemed redundant' today and how well they coped with it.

Personally I would probably just make a scene and throw myself on the floor, kicking and screaming until someone stuffed a solid severance bonus check down my throat, but that was not the case. Fortunately for my team - that would have been a mess.

On a side note, now that the department has decreased in size, our giant office space will be shared with the MCP.

Now, MCPS does is not an abbreviation for Males Competitive Penis Syndrome - even though that would be a very fitting title for my next subject of my rant.

MCP is our Medical Center Provider.

And MCP has a manager who is very British in the 'I wear polka dotted jeans to work on Casual Friday' sense.

Heiko.

The most common expression when facing Heiko's fashion sense.

Okay, so I know that whenever I walk by his office, he will stare at my rear, obviously. And I understand that he has a hard time not being too excited when accidentally bumping into me in the canteen and how he - today - felt he needed to give me a hug when I wasn't even the one being fired.

But now his office becomes my office.... As we are all put together in one giant office.

Cost effectiveness they call it.

I call it war.

......

What is it with men anyway? Why must you be so ridiculously retarded whenever a girl you fancy is nearby? The more you show interest in a girl, the more repulsive you become. If we ask you for your address, you might not even be able to stutter it out while your eyes are busy gorging in the mountain of flesh attached on the anterior axis distal to our collarbone.

I dread the Summer party. Because it will be hot and I will be gleaming and wearing a dress that, no matter how I try to cover myself up, will make me appear more naked than the statue of David. At least to Heiko.

I can just imagine him - making sweet moves on the dancefloor (Wearing polka dots maybe?), in an attempt to impress me. It's just uncool. It does not appeal to my primal urges. Acting out a seizure victim does not make you a good lover. Unless you are into that sort of thing?

So today I decided to see if he could manage other moves than smile retardedly at me whenever I am in the sphere of his existense and possibly provoke some sort of unbritish, unethical reaction from him. You can call me scientific, or just bored.

How about a good old-fashioned battle of the sexes, yes? Pull some rank! Or seduce him with meatloaf?

Well, I decided to ask him about the many distress calls they receive at the medical center, so I asked him if he had ever heard of women being abused by the brutality that is most commonly known as a husband?

According to our vague policy conditions, we do not cover such a thing as abuse but what if a woman was in need of medical assistance after a beating? (And she told him no thrice)

Would it be considered as the same procedure when a father (and a doctor) performs surgery on his dog/daughter in the backyard?

And Heiko did respond. He found it a very odd question and asked me why I would like such a thing in our manual. So I decided to show him some statistics of how many cases we have had of these abuses and how many women worldwide are abused and there is nothing they can do about it.

Heiko hugged me. That's all he did. Seriously.

An artists rendering of today's argument at the office.

Needless to say, - he does not abuse his wife. Nor takes me seriously.

Maybe I will huff and puff next time until I can get a more decent reaction out of him.

Anyway. Enough with my rantings about the cosmic irregularity of males.

I did not get fired.

I did not do the dishes yet.

It is now holiday and therefore my weekend has been prolonged and for this weekend I will eat, chum, devour, satisfy my needs until I end up exhausted on the floor Monday morning - ready to bitch and moan about how stupid it was of me to waste another weekend on doing nothing but eat.

Another weekend victim.